


Viral Perfection

by Catharticism



Category: Bloodborne (Video Game), Prototype (Video Games)
Genre: Blood and Violence, Cannabalism, Catharsis Writing/Fiction, Gore, Gratuitous Violence, No Smut, Other, at least I don't think I'll be writing sex scenes, gender neutral reader, no beta we die like men, stress writing, this fic makes no sense but that's ok
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-02
Updated: 2019-02-14
Packaged: 2019-07-23 09:41:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16156475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catharticism/pseuds/Catharticism
Summary: The perfect disease. The perfect cure. Together, they are unstoppable.AKA, you've heard of Protocreed. Now, get ready for...Bloodtype.(My stress-writing piece that updates sporadically. Don't read if you're icky with excessive blood and gore.)





	1. Crimson

**Author's Note:**

> I emerge from the depths of hell to dump this shitty fanfic I wrote while feeling a plethora of negative emotions last weekend and now I'm supposed to be completing my project but whatever.

You wake up confused. Thirsty. Your mouth tastes of fresh, liquid iron, and although your body aches strangely, no pain immediately presents itself. The cold stone floor soothes your hot skin, and the stench of old mold and musk permeates the air.

Licking your lips, you slowly rise up off the ground. Everything, silent. Nothing moves, nothing sounds. No one calls out for you, or greets your presence.

You are alone.

How did you get here in the first place?

It’s important to check anything else on you: a knapsack, nearly falling apart more from wear than any traumatic damage, the vestiges of what was once probably a journal hanging off your belt. A bit of stretching, and the imprint of a knife inside your boot presses against your leg.

In a strange way, the loneliness is peaceful.

Where did you come from?

The hallway you stand in heads off in different directions, and although both look the same, filled with the same dead tendrils and unknown engravings, you feel something ancient, archaic, foreboding from the dark stone path in front of you. Something in your heart sparks in joy, anticipating the lull of adventure and discovery, but your brain, the instinctual part of your brain, knows better.

Stay away.

You’re parched. Iron sits in your tongue and marinates in your mouth. You swallow the last of the warmth down, and find yourself wanting for more.

You check your body, and find tears all across your clothing, but where they appear, only bulging, scarred skin shows. Fully healed, if not cleanly.

Nothing else keeps you company; the stone halls are bare, save for the blue torches lining the way, but the feeling doesn’t fade. Never fades.

Shaking your head, you begin walking towards the opposite direction, hoping you can find more clues about this place and your current situation. Your steps echo forlornly, dissipating into nothingness far enough into the distance with nothing else to answer back. You need to regroup, prepare yourself again, get back to…

To who? Something tugs at you, whispering of a group of like-minded people that walk and talk just like you, but no names nor faces can clearly come to mind. Still, thinking of them makes you feel warm, safe, and happy. Remains of memories keep your heart memory, even if no singular event strikes at you.

But you feel fear too. Fear, and grief.

Why?

Luckily for you, there seems that little markers exist: small candle-lit lights on the ground occur in some pathways, unlit in others. They might be a way back to where you started! You follow those candles, never straying into the dank darkness that hide what your mind doesn’t know but what your primal soul fears. Foul-smelling lumps dot the way at times, and the small pebble-like objects you kick at make a tinny sound as they bounce away.

As you approach a larger area, you see great hulking creatures and vaguely-human forms prowling about, like listless predators waiting for their next catch. Something tells you that attracting their attention guarantees a certain death, so you strive to make each step you take as furtive as a cockroach in a busy kitchen as your sidle across the broken, worn tiles. They do not face you. They pay no attention to you.

You wonder if they could smell blood; if they can, then you’re lucky that you’re uninjured.

Small candles on an outcropping connected to the floor by a dilapidated ladder seem to flicker at you, as if coaxing you to follow them. You do, and eagerly, taking a tentative step on the ladder to make sure it doesn’t creak before you climb up it towards… what, freedom? Sunlight? Whatever world lives outside of this silent hell.

Whisps line the path ahead of you, hanging in the air, and the primal feeling in your veins keep you rooted in your place, watching the fog-like entities move to and fro. No clear path forward makes itself apparent to you.

You’re so, so thirsty. Tired. And thirsty. Your throat catches upon itself, trying to find moisture from the saliva that your mouth produces, but nothing satisfies your thirst. The taste of iron fades from your tongue, and something in your heart beats in panic. You need it. You don’t know why, but you need it.

You take a quick look around you; the horrors below continue paying no mind to you, and the white wisps ahead seem to stay within the confines of their little stone hallway. Only the light, the candles, continue their kindness towards you.

It’s as safe as you’re going to get.

You slowly and quietly take off your knapsack and set it on the ground, untying the knot that connects it to a metal button. (The button contains an insignia of some sort. You don’t recognize it.) A few more journals line the inside. A 19th-century flintlock, and unloaded you discover as you check the inside. Various writing utensils tossed haphazardly in the bottom. Two bottles of water. Energy bars and other assortments of snacks. Essential hygiene. A little stuffed figurine, no bigger than a baby’s hand, that brought a bit of light into your heart. You lightly pack the pockets, but the searching turns up fruitless too.

Your only weapon is the knife fit snugly against your left calf, and you bring out. It balances perfectly in your hands, the handle splendid in your grip. You lightly touch the edge-- five inches of razor-sharp beauty.

It’ll do.

You sigh, mentally preparing yourself for what will come as you close and tie up your knapsack and sling it back on. You swing the knife a few times to have a better feel for it, and step forward.. Another step. Faster.

The white wisps move closer, and you can almost hear them breathe.

You need to  **_R U N_ ** .

They screech deafeningly, knives and hands clawing after you, searching, searching. You swing your arm wildly, but your blade finds no purchase. Your other arm blooms in pain, like a thorny rose, and you see fear, see red, see the faces of death looming around your, nearing closer and closer and closer to you.

You charge at one, knife out, and it sinks in beautifully inside what can be assumed is its stomach, and the screeching is louder, so you scream louder than them to drive it all away. Red bursts, drapes your wounded arm with it, and it’s soothing and warm like balm on a sunburn. You feel your body falling apart, falling back together; you can hear everything stitching back together of its own accord.

Since when did ghosts bleed?

You rip the knife out, and with another cry stab again until the pale, willowy form is gone, but the others are nearing, and you know for what they want after, but you can’t stop the next slice and the next thrust. Your bones sing in ecstasy, your veins beg for more, and somewhere along the line, your brain is silent.

You  **_need_ ** this so, very much, even when your steps stumble, even when your wild frenzy can’t hide the lack of power in your flesh.

Two swipe at your chest, and as skin breaks and bleeds your breath is ripped away from you, and you fall down backwards, away from the crowd in the hallway to a wider room. They fill into it, surround you with their groaning, their white, emaciated half-bodies, closer, closer.

But can’t you smell it? It’s bright, so close, so warm, even when something a bit colder and different and older starts to overrun it. In that moment, your essence clears, the whispers you never knew existed quiets, the coppery iron forgotten, and you are in awed reverie.

Your grip tightens on the knife, and you charge through again.

They are confused when you only bat them away, and try to claw for you again, snagging the edge of your coat, but they only manage to tear away a piece of cloth, and you keep running, running, towards a little unlit lamp on the ground, looking so fragile as if just a touch would render it to dust. Above, the fading golden rays shine down, highlighting a piece of rope.

Salvation!

You grab for it, and climb, keep climbing. Their crimson song tempts you to stay, but the outside air is fresh in your lungs, the sunlight seeping into your skin, and you climb away from its siren song as desperate groans and screeches trail after you. You climb, you climb, pull yourself up towards the light, up towards salvation, away from the labyrinth of horrors, away from whoever you leave behind. You can almost feel the tears of relief pooling in your eyes, but you blink them away, and just keep on climbing, and climbing, and climbing.

Your hands touch rock next, and you quickly pull the rope up fast and crawl through the ancient debris (who knows how old they are now?) to chase after the warm golden rays, kinder wisps that don’t seek to feast upon your own crimson song. You don’t care for the cuts and scrapes against your body, not when you are close, so close, so close!

Tears fall when your feel it on your face.

Their screams echo after you, fading as it meets the sunlight, and you look around for something to stop it all, to oppose them. A convenient rock will do, large and imposing. With adrenaline-fueled strength, you life and push and shove it into place, into and over the hole where hell laid beyond.

Peaceful silence and a foreign dusk sky welcomes you back.


	2. Forgotten Memories

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dont read end notes if you dont enjoy sad thoughts

It takes you a good handful of hours to reach something that implies civilization, but of course you are still the only one present. Adrenaline has long since passed, and the chest wounds definitely hurt far too much for you to continue walking like this. Your very bones ache, muscles completely cramped, and you were more than willing to kiss whatever surface might become your bed out of sheer relief and gratitude.

A campsite stretches in front of you, filling up the space where the little hill is. One can take in a gorgeous night sky from where you stand in it. Tents dot the area, four in total, as well as a trailer and a multi-terrain SUV. The pit where the fire should go has long blackened and died out, without leaving even an ember to use. You take a peek inside the tents, and find people’s personal items and light luggage of their own strewn about. You rife through them, and find a bit of information from various journals and loose-leaf paper.

They’re a party of historians and archaeologists who came here under the leadership of an acclaimed historian. Theirs names, genders, and various other descriptions are given, and they all speak highly of the lead of their group. They recently discovered a mysterious ruin in the Czech countryside, and prepared the night before in this camp before setting out to explore it.

A sinking feeling churns in your stomach, and you do all that you can to bring out other records about this group of eager, foolhardy professionals out into the open. More journals, papers, even a laptop with a glittery dark-violet color that one of them left behind for safe-keeping. There’s a lot of material for you to go through yourself, and you bring out the journals inside your own knapsack and set them aside, away from the pile of clues as to who they are.

Who you might be.

You reach the last tent, put up much more nicely than the others, silently speaking of years of experience out in the field, and you enter inside. Any decor is minimal, all other materials and objects neatly organized, and only two bags remain inside: a black backpack and a brown messenger bag. You bring it with you too, the gently-used polyester of the former and the worn leather of the latter somehow familiarly soothing under your fingertips. A few pins of various symbols dot the outside of the messenger bag, and you rub your fingers over the cheap plastic as well.

You simply feel what should be a bit of nostalgia, like an old lullaby a mother would sing to her child long ago that they hear once again in their old age, but nothing concrete truly comes to light. All you’re left with, for now, is just… feelings. You should hate the vagueness of everything, but instead you’re excited. It’s just like solving a puzzle, a very long and confusing puzzle where you start off with nearly nothing and work to reach a conclusion.

Thankfully, the black backpack holds a mostly-empty memo book inside, one with soothing pastel-yellow pages and thin lines, and you take it out, along with a pen from the worn knapsack. Its ball-point glides seamlessly across the paper as you write down the information you compile from the various journals that belonged within the first three tents.

Each of the journals are marked inside with the names of those who they once belonged too, and you don’t feel guilty at all looking through them. Desmond “Dessie” Mayes. Vasco Attano. Ash Walker. Kara Aarden.

Dessie was an excitable young man; in fact, he was a university senior from abroad, aiming for a bachelors in anthropology. He excelled at foreign languages that he learned for fun, and were it not for the fact that their leader was fluent in Czech already, he would have been the group’s main translator. His words imply naivete, bright-eyed wordly innocence, but he seemed to be the responsible and dependable young fellow. He did his coursework at night, and it showed; what seemed to be his tent was filled to the brim with textbooks, worksheets, and notes that had nothing to do with history.

Vasco was an older professional historian, specializing in pre-Christian European history ever since he graduated from some Italian university a good decades ago with his Masters. He struck you as someone that was far too serious for your tastes, but his writings held a plethora of sage knowledge and further insight on what the rest of the group was like. Something in his journals implied 

Ash Walker was an old friend of the leader. They were mostly quiet, definitely an extreme introvert, but their journals held similarly deep insight on whatever struck them fancy, and they enjoyed doodling the sights that they passed by on their journey with the rest of the group. They also had a habit of jotting down dreams they had, and in fact had a fat bright-red journal filled to the brim with such dreams; they might be entertaining reads later on if you got bored, although picking the remains of such a worthy group of intellectuals guarantee probably years of continuous interest that will stave off whatever boredom that will come upon you.

Kara Aarden was the oldest of the group, well into her fifties as her journal often laments about, and is their local guide through the countryside as well as being an acclaimed archaeologist.. She remained unmarried and is quite happy about that, although her journals kept oozing less-than-pure thoughts about Attano. You deeply regret reading into more, and close the journal before your mind can be poisoned by more imaginative writing of how “sexily silky smooth” the Italian man’s voice is.

The leader remains a mystery, but not for long.

You open up the black backpack and are greeted to the sight of it completely filled to the brim with papers, tattered journals from what looks like different time periods, and a small bell made of tarnished silver. You take the bell out and tried to ring it, but nothing sounds.

You take a journal out, nothing more than a dollar-value composition notebook, and open it. A photo falls out onto your lap, the blank back facing you, showing a date and five names. You recognize the four’s names, but not the fifth. Out of curiosity, you flip it over, running a finger over the figure of the central person, who is undeniably the leader of these group of people. They all stand happily in front of a large building, probably a grand church of some sort from the religious iconography featured in the architecture. Something can’t sit quite right with you, and you rummage through the backpacks again until you find a mirror (Kara’s hand-mirror, to be exact). You hold it out in front of you, taking a look-over at your own features. You look definitely worse for wear, and all different sorts of stressed out and anxious, but hey, it’s you, and you’re alive.

However, what strikes you most is that… that person? Right there, in the middle of the photograph?

That’s you. There’s no denying it. The hair’s identical, and so is the skin-tone. Your eyes, the hoodie… it’s all the same.

It’s so easy to put two and two together from there, isn’t it? You were their leader, guiding them to a mission in some labyrinthian catacomb. You woke up there, all on your lonesome, with your possessions and a scar-ridden body. Who knows how long you’ve been trapped in those stone hallways? Perhaps maybe even long enough to go mad, lose your memories, and start your life over again? You couldn’t even remember your own name, for goodness’ sake, and just to check it, you flip the photograph over again to read what has to be your name, say it out loud, let it settle in your tongue.

Worst of all, you feel nothing.

No guilt. No regret. Fear has long since gone the moment the outside world greeted your worn body back. There’s no urge to express any other emotion other than cold, numb acceptance of the fate you’re allotted as of this current circumstance. You cannot find it in your heart to mourn these four people personally; how can you mourn, how can you care for people that you don’t know?

If anything, frustration is all that you can truly feel. Surely, there must be some feeling left for you to latch onto, but there’s nothing left.

That’s what has your heart twisted and tied into distress.

Your growling stomach is a welcome distraction from it all, at least, and so after finding that there’s no food to be found in any of the tents (at least not a substantial amount to stave off your hunger), you search the trailer. You’re satisfied with what you find; canned goods, preserved meat, fruits, vegetables in the refrigerator, and was that beer in the bottom shelf? You aren’t in much of a mood to drink any alcohol, but you can really go after something sweet to tide you over, in all honesty.

You bite into an apple, scrumptious and sweet with just the right amount of tart and crunch, and take out a can of soup and make a sandwich or two for yourself… maybe even three. Or five. You rummage about, exploring what should be your familiar campsite but isn’t at all and find adequate medical equipment stashed inside a convenient plastic box: gauze, antiseptic, tape, needle and thread, rubbing alcohol. A note is taped inside the lid: “You all are wreckless dumbasses. - VA”

You use them as necessary, scrimping on what you can. You have no idea if you’ll need more later on, and you cannot afford to not be prepared.

The food is enough to tide you over for the night, and you feel yourself filling back up with energy that you lost in your… recent adventures. A comfortable warmth tries to settle in your stomach, but the sick twisting of your guts drive it away. You’re nourished, but unsatisfied, both full and empty at the same time. Your eyes try to create tears, but something you don’t understand and can’t control holds them back. You whisper your name to the night air. You whisper their names.

There’s not much else to do. You’re tired and injured, the amateur stitches across your chest hardly doing your comfort any favors, but you’re ready to collapse inside a tent and call it a night. The night air is somewhat cold on your skin, threatening chills to rain upon you come morning if you don’t cover up. Packing up the journals and papers, the laptop and the scraps of notes, and organizing them into piles inside one of the tents, you keep the humble fire burning in the pit and crawl inside what is probably your tent.

A fiction novel laid beside the sleeping bag, well-worn with love, with a bookmark towards the end. You open it out of sheer curiosity, not like you can read anything in the darkness, and thumb over the soft pages. Nothing is familiar. Nothing stirs a memory within you.

How is it possible to be surrounded with the remains of so much life, and yet feel as if you exist alone in a dead world?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm disastrously sick again, I'm gonna fail physics in 3 weeks, I was 2 chairs away from making the regional mixed choir, and my hearing is failing.  
> Apparently, my response to that is to write this.  
> Not gonna bother stressing about decreased quality.


	3. Stranger

You spend the next several days packing up the camp and reading bits and pieces of the party’s remnants. Maybe it was a week, you can’t really tell. You make a sizeable dent into the reserves of food, although half the time you find yourself biting into barely-cooked meat than a proper meal. You check the condition of the trailer and the SUV, hooking on onto another. You clean up the campsite, careful to not leave a trace of your presence behind. You try not to aggravate your wounds any further as you move equipment and luggage into the vehicles.

It’s… mundane, in a way that clears your head as you try and come up with a plan to follow once you finish everything here.

Reaching civilization is an obvious enough goal, but you remember how the blood and violence against those wraith-like wisps in the labyrinth made you feel, how your body seemed to heal around it. Maybe it’s not a good idea to be around people?

But you’re _lonely_. Sitting around wordlessly and reading the words of the dead only makes you more aware of that hole in your chest, acutely feeling the gnawing emptiness inside you that hungers for something, something more. Maybe companionship can solve this, or a friend, as you figure out what precisely is ailing you, if your current condition can be called an ailment.

You finish packing in the early afternoon, right after a lunch of microwaved rice, eggs, and tomato-flavored beans that you’re pretty sure isn’t really a noontime meal, before you could make up your mind.

Now sitting in the driver’s seat, fingering the ignition key in your hand, you wonder again what to do next. You can only be alone and stay away from civilization for so long, until you run out of food and fuel. You know there’s at least two containers of gasoline left, sitting innocuously inside the trailer, so you’re set for at least two days of straight driving with periods of breaks for sleep, but you doubt that whoever you were in the past had any experience with hunting wildlife.

There’s a map and a GPS, at least, and it lists a nearby village that you five had never visited for some odd reason, half a day to the northeast. You’re not quite sure how much of a help it can be, and you’re off-road too to boot.

Sighing dejectedly to yourself, you turn the engine on and start making your way to the village, until you realize just how _awful_ of a driver you are, careening to the right and left and screaming inside your head about how you have no idea how you and the car and the trailer hasn’t blown up into questionable smithereens!

To be fair to yourself, you do actually scream, and you brake hard, the seatbelt stopping you from meeting the steering wheel chest-first, panting heavily as your adrenaline cooled down. Your chest wounds ache again, but at least it isn’t as bad as it was a… week ago? A week ago.

Your voice is hoarse from disuse. Strange. Was that really a sound you made from your own mouth? You gingerly touch your throat, and make another vocalization.

How can your own voice sound this foreign to you?

It takes you longer than necessary to recover, and the dark stench of rubber and gasoline don’t help at all, but the next time you bring the SUV to drive you don’t slam your foot onto the accelerator at the very least, and you keep a slow and steady speed as you traverse the thankfully flat field until you find a highway to land yourself on. The GPS tells you where to head, and you follow dutifully. Sure, you’re probably slower than you liked, a good handful of kilometers below the speed limit when you gaze at the speed limit sign on your way, but with both hands on the wheel, it’s not too bad.

You have a feeling that the you from the past never drove much, and as you make your journey, you’re starting to see why.

At least the only person to witness your embarrassing driving skills (or lack thereof) is just yourself.

* * *

You reach the village in the dead of night. The sound of the SUV’s engine is almost deafening in the quiet, dark air, only archaic lampposts lighting the paved roads that have to be at least half a century old. A certain smell clings to the air, a bit like life and filth if you put your mind to it. You find a motel at least, dilapidated and neglected as it is, and walk inside the building. Or at least, you attempt to. The door is locked, the lights are out, and there’s not a soul in sight to receive you.

There isn’t even a trailer park. Damn.

You find a vaguely empty parking lot that can fit more than twenty cars inside, and park at the edges.

Everything’s too loud. Setting up the trailer, finding a small snack that wasn’t a bag of chips to tide you over as you sleep, even just settling under the bed. Sleep doesn’t come easy to you either, the silence deafening to your ears, and when you wake up feeling like you’ve climbed a mountain you wonder if you even slept at all. You need coffee. Badly.

With a caffeine fix in your thermos and a fresh change of clothes despite still wearing the same jeans, because let’s be honest even you in the midst of your amnesia know that you can wear the same jeans for five days straight and no one will be any wiser, you step out of your trailer.

Very conveniently, the parking lot belongs to what’s probably the only area in the village with any kind of stores to buy things from, and with a hand shoved into a jacket pocket, you walk into the grocery store. It’s still early, and most of the customers present don’t seem to be very awake except for a woman in yoga pants as you pick at some fresh vegetables, taking sips of your piping-hot coffee.

Whatever language you thought in, it’s not the language everyone else here spoke, and yet you can understand nearly every word with relative ease as long as your mind doesn’t wander off.

_“Did you see the trailer parked outside?”_

_“I hope they don’t come to stay.”_

_“-- your damn dog off my lawn before--”_

_“-- tutors for my daughter? She’s not doing very well in English.”_

A cabbage. Some carrots. No bananas, but apples are fine, and you’ve been craving fresher foods ever since you ran out yesterday, and they all smell delicious. A bag of dried dates don’t seem to bad either. You seem to have enough cash for it, and you’re reluctant to use any of your cards, or the cards of anyone else that was once in your party. You felt guilty about taking all of their physical euros for yourself, but honestly, can they use any of it now?

Toothpaste from some native Czech brand, probably, and ooooh that’s some more first aid material. You fill your basket with the things you need, and walk up to the counter. The cashier lady’s eyes widen at your presence as you put the basket down and start putting your groceries on the counter.

“Good morning,” she greeted in thick English, struggling for what words she did know, and you felt a twinge of sympathy, although the memory that should relate to the doesn’t surface.

“ _Good morning, ma’am_ ,” you greet back in your own flawed Czech to spare her the pain of using a language she probably only ever needs once a decade, and her brightens up significantly. Afterwards, she tries to strike up a casual conversation with you as she rings up your items, and you attempt your best efforts in your replies. She doesn’t seem to mind your broken Czech much, other than looking confused at certain words that you repeat once you see her expression.

You have more than enough money to pay for everything, and you thank the lady and bid her goodbye, leaving the grocery store feeling just as lonely, maybe even lost.

Your real, actual breakfast is spent gazing out the window at the throng of people bustling about. Most of them are middle-aged. No children, no teens. Maybe they’re still at school. There’s plenty of old people, and a few that look to be around your age. They’re all very noticeably white, in a blue-eyed light-brown-hair with extremely pale skin sort of white, like a Swedish man that can actually retain a tan even if his skin just ends up being a few shades darker.

You head out. A wallet in your jean pockets, a phone in your hand as you quietly wander around the village. Curious faces look towards you, and you wave at them. Some wave back. Some ignore you. Some come closer.

A friendly old man points you over to the local library, and while it’s bound to be nothing as extensive as the university library your past self must be used to, you head towards the newer building. A bell tinkles overhead as you push the door open, and a woman looks up at you in surprise.

Another casual wave and another greeting. She shakes off her surprise soon enough, and you’re realizing how useful it is to know a local native language when she warms up to you surprisingly quick. The fact that you’re a foreigner to these parts can’t be obvious enough, but at least the somewhat-shared language makes a rickety bridge across to their world.

Unfortunately, the library doesn’t follow the Dewey Decimal system at _all_ , and as you squint your eyes at quite unfamiliar words you gain an understanding that reading Czech is much harder than simply speaking it conversationally, and so you resign to simply walking through the aisles. You can’t remember what the Czech word for “blood” is, but at least you recognize a section meant for medical books when something about-- you don’t know, was it “sickness”?-- catches your eye, and your feet carry you to that shelf.

The thing is, if semi-advanced medical texts don’t already read like absolutely undecipherable mysteries themselves, then try reading them in _Czech_. You roughly shove the offending book detailing internal anatomical parts back into the shelf in frustration, and wander over to a portion of the library where you can actually recognize some words.

There’s a small selection of English books, but most are there to help readers learn the language and smell of dust and unseen book mold that makes you feel like you need to sneeze. The closest thing you can find for what you’re looking for is an incomplete young adult novel series about zombies released last decade, and you place it back inside the shelves.

You’ll need to go farther. Refuel both yourself and your car, rest, then leave. There’s nothing for you here.

As you get to leaving the library, someone that actually looks to like around your age walks in. He greets the librarian cordially, then sets his sight on you with a faint expression of surprise. “Good morning, visitor,” he says in perfect British English, and now it’s your turn to look surprised. He chuckles and brings his hand out, and you shake it while muttering something that vaguely sounds like “good morning” back along with your name. “I’m Roland Anderson,” he greeted back, and seeing your stunned expression at his very non-Eastern European name, added, “Most people tend to be surprised. I’m not from around here either, but it’s a nice place to settle down and practice my trade.” You breathe a sigh of relief at the chance to talk in a familiar tongue.

“Your trade?”

“I’m the local primary doctor around here; my clinic is nearby.”

A clinic! As you take your hand away, you instinctively set it to the center of your chest, palm down, and he immediately takes notice of the movement. You smile sheepishly at him, but he doesn’t judge, and simply waves you over to follow him. You both wave your good-byes at the librarian, who says something about keeping some books for the doctor until he returns, and you travel a few blocks in an amiable silence.

His clinic is small, with a small waiting area in the front decorated with sunny windows and pastel flowers sat in tall, plastic vases. Their sweet aroma guarantees their genuinability, but it’s not an overpowering scent and you enjoy the change in atmospheres. He logs you into the computer, and he doesn’t ask for paperwork, thankfully, and you dip into a room. One of those reclining table-things sit at the center, with various instruments in the walls and a countertop for a sink and some glass jars with cotton swabs, popsicle sticks, and the like. It’s homey, the light above warm and pleasant, and you relax without noticeably realizing.

He instructs you to take off your shirt, and you do so after a quick glance at his soft, kind eyes. He doesn’t touch you, but he does lean in close to inspect the angry slashes.

“Do they bleed anymore?”

“Only if I try and exert myself too much.”

“They must still hurt.”

“Yes, a lot if I’m not careful. I did everything myself, but I’d much prefer more professional care as soon as possible.”

He looks up at you, the smile still set on his mouth. “I’m glad we met, then.”

You take off the dressings, and he helps you when your visibly wince at any pain. He tsks at the sloppy stitches and notes that they’ll leave quite a scar, but leaves them alone and applies antiseptic that stings. You down an antibiotic he gives you and watch as his skilled hands apply new bandages, his work much cleaner than yours, denoting years of experience.

His payment isn’t extraordinarily high, and you gratefully hand over a handful of bills that he pockets casually without bothering to count them, and he looks at you as you leave.

And you almost do. Leave, that is. But, you have questions, and he might be the last person that can help you when the alternative is subpar fiction and unreadable medical textbooks.

“You didn’t ask how I got them,” you start rather dumbly, and you look at the view outside the window. It’s quiet and peaceful, idyllic, and you can imagine yourself living the rest of your life out comfortably like this, in a sleepy town in the middle of nowhere. Pick up more Czech, find someone to really teach you how to read the language. You’re not quite sure if you have the paperwork to make a permanent residence however, but even if you move elsewhere, questions might rise when people discover that you have the identifications for four missing people that you can’t remember.

The doctor makes a small laugh and he shakes his head at you. “When you live here long enough, you learn not to question anything or anyone that comes in through the door.”

Well, isn’t that rather cryptic. “What do you mean by that?” You ask him, turning back to him. Something indecipherable exists in his face, and you aren’t sure what it is exactly.

“There’s a city, a ways out here. It existed maybe… two hundred years ago? Maybe a bit less. The people here only have old stories about it, passed down by people’s grandmothers’ grandmothers, and none of them are good. It’s cursed ground, they say, laid to waste by God Himself. I saw a trailer and truck pass by on the road a bit more than a week ago, headed towards the direction of the city, and now I see it parked in a parking lot.”

Mister Anderson is… perceptive, you’d give him that, and you’re increasingly wary of this quiet and helpful doctor who stands innocently in the light yet stares firmly at you.

“What were the stories about?,” you ask carefully. The journal that the you of the past treasured and kept safely in a locked box under the bed detailed creatures and rituals, items and events, all beyond belief, but if the stories add up…

Was this why you were once a historian?

“Stay,” he simply said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i was feelin kinda weird and maybe its my period so hey thats kinda fitting for blood and gore and what do you know i wrote this in like 3 days w/ no beta but at least Aviators' new album's here to keep me company  
> yay  
> sorri for bein a shitty fren


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